Make artWORK: You and Your Books, Part2

By Clay Schudel

Last month I wrote about getting more control over your life by getting a better understanding of your finances. Click here to read that post! If you are just getting started, or don’t know where to start, here are a few useful tips:

1-      Organize your paperwork. Whether you’re making your living as an artist / performer or if you’re just getting started as a working artist (but all of your income is from a day job), remember to take your business seriously.

l  Get into the habit of keeping all bills in one place, so that you can easily put your hands on them, and commit to visiting your home “financial center” at least once a week. Develop a simple system that works for you and stick to it – for example, if you need to, use a red pen to write at the top of each bill the due date so you never get stuck paying a late fee for a credit card bill or miss an important payment.

l  If you’re an individual artist your business expenses and personal living expenses are likely mingled; this makes it extremely important to save your records in an organized way so that when you file your tax returns you can claim every legitimate business expense as an independent contractor against any income, to make sure that you only pay taxes on any profit that your business made. Do this organizing as the year goes along. If you are going to claim a deduction, you’re going to need a record of:

When: The date of the transaction

Where: Where you bought the item

What: What the item was

Why: What purpose it served in your business

Try making a simple spreadsheet with these columns: 

Date  |  Category  |  Vendor  |  Cost  |  Purpose

Make a note on your receipts (“rent; costumes; business meeting”) and file them as you pay them; $10 spent at Staples now on a few file folders will save you so much stress at tax time, digging through every drawer in your apartment and trying to remember what these receipts were for.

·         If you’re prefer saving digital copies of your receipts, there are several phone apps that allow you to photograph and save a cloud based copy of your receipts; probably the two most popular ones are Shoeboxed ($9.95 a month, but this app has many other mobile accounting features than just organizing receipts) https://www.shoeboxed.com/features/

and the much more basic One Receipt (free app) http://www.onereceipt.com/

2 - Evaluate and understand your income and your expenses. Knowing what you spend, and what your income is, over a period of time will let you make intelligent budgets, better use what resources you have, and do all kinds of short and long-term planning. As I wrote last month, the program that I still rely on MOST OF ALL is one that almost everyone already has if they have a home computer – the old fashioned Excel spreadsheet.

·         Start by listing regular income and expenses you know will happen or feel pretty sure about:

Make a thorough list of your regular income, and note when it happens; you should put down things that happen monthly (a job that pays a salary every 2 weeks), a few times a year (do you a get quarterly royalty check?) or once a year (do you usually get a tax refund every May? Teach a paid workshop every summer?)

·         Make this same list for your known fixed expenses. Be as thorough and as realistic as you can; after you list your large and regularly repeating expenses like rent, utilities and internet, take a good look at your cash or credit card spending and try to understand your patterns and to group your spending into categories; use your bank and credit card statements to help you note regularly repeating automatic payments you may not think of (Netflix? Insurance premiums?) and notice when your credit card payments themselves are due.

Lining these two categories (Income & Expense) up side by side in two columns will go a long way towards showing you the bare bones of your financial picture and will help you see cash flow gaps that you have to prepare for or changes you want to make in your spending.

 Follow the links below for pre-loaded templates! 

Microsoft Office (maker of Excel) has lots of preloaded Excel spreadsheets that you can download from the Office website, and easily modify for your own uses. 

SCORE, a nonprofit that provides mentorship services for small businesses and entrepreneurs also has many templates you can download and modify to help you analyze your expenses and cash flow

Here’s a very simple cash flow forecasting spreadsheet that I created using Excel

You don’t need to be stressed out about the money side of your creative business. A plan that’s simple enough for you to actually keep up with (and doesn’t take too much time away from your real work of making art) is the one that’s right for you.

Make artWORK: You and Your Books, Part 1

Part 1, By Clay Schudel

Understanding your financial situation – what you have, where it comes from, what you really spend it on and when you need to spend it – gives you much more control over your life. It gives you more control over creating the work you love. It lets you make smarter choices. Understanding your finances lets you plan bigger projects, and avoid the stress of not being sure if you’re on the right track or of being caught by surprise by something you could have seen coming.

You may already have a great accountant (or you may BE a great accountant; I have seen some amazing financial records from some member artists at The Field!) but if not, there’s no time like the present to take a fresh look at your bookkeeping system.

There are some great accounting software packages out there that can help people with very little accounting training keep an impressive and accurate set of books; while you may think of a complicated software systems as "real" bookkeeping, any process that involves the recording of financial transactions is a bookkeeping process. You don’t need any special tools to keep good financial records. Until 30 years ago, almost every system relied on paper, pens and ledger books! But there are a lot of tools now that can make bookkeeping much simpler.

By definition, bookkeeping is “the recording of financial transactions, including purchases, sales, receipts and payments”, so at the most basic level, we’re talking about keeping clear records of your income and bills, all in one place, and understanding your bottom line. Having an accurate sense of how your money flows in and out, over a period of time, will help you plan in every way, from putting together a long term budget for a business plan, to strategizing a fundraising plan for a one-time performance.

The program that I still rely on MOST OF ALL is one that almost everyone already has if they have a home computer – the old fashioned spreadsheet. If you’re comfortable at all working with spreadsheets, Excel (Microsoft) or Calc (Open Office, and free) are extremely flexible programs that you can use to set up any kind of budget, cash flow forecasts and other planning tools, checkbook registers or really anything to do with numbers. The web is FULL of free tutorials on how to get the most out of Excel, sample templates you can download and tips about using spreadsheets in general. Google is your friend!

QuickBooks is a great software package with a not-too-steep learning curve but it’s sophisticated enough for most small businesses. The QuickBooks Pro desktop package costs about $250.
QuickBooks also has a cloud-based online product that costs about $10/month.

I have heard good things about Zoho, another cloud-based accounting program (but have not used it myself).
https://www.zoho.com/books/

Another cloud-based personal budgeting app that has been recommended to us is “You Need A Budget” ($60 one-time fee for download)
http://www.youneedabudget.com/

No matter how well you understand your business figures, unless your finances are extremely simple and you’re filing a basic non-itemized tax form, it’s a good idea to find a professional accountant to look over your books once a year (or quarterly if necessary) and to prepare your taxes. A good accountant will almost always be able to help you find deductible expenses that you may not have thought of yourself, and she may be aware of changes in the tax code that can make a big difference.

April 15th is just around the corner, so grab life by the horns and good luck!

Make artWORK: How to Survive in NYC as an Artist

By Liza Green and Claire Baum

This November we were invited to do a life and career guidance seminar for Barnard College dance students as part of the Dancer Empowerment Project. Our task was to take the (slightly daunting) topic of “How to Survive in NYC as an Artist” and make it manageable for these soon-to-be college graduates to have a career in the arts. The ninety-minute workshop aimed  to provide these young artists with useful tools, skills, and resources to help them jumpstart their careers. Hosted by Gibney Dance, we opened the workshop to the public and ended up with a fierce group of early to mid-career dance and theatre makers.

We broke down this large question of “How to Survive in NYC as an Artist,” into four main categories:

1. Finance;
2. Relationships;
3. Marketing and;
4. Enrichment/Training.

Because of the impending Thanksgiving holiday, we naturally asked them to draw a hand turkey, like the ones we made in grade school, on a piece of construction paper. The “feathers” on the turkey provided space for the four points of our lives as art makers We asked them to dress up their turkeys however they liked, beaks, tap shoes, etc. and to put their name and their artistic discipline/role in the center. For example, the center of Claire’s turkey read “Claire Baum, Dancer, Choreographer.”

Below is a condensed version of the topics we covered on our turkeys, complete with helpful tips and links to even more resources.

FEATHER 1: FINANCE

Finance can simply be broken down into earning and spending. Artists typically earn their income in three different ways: earning money from their art, having a flexible day/night job (i.e. babysitting, bartending, temping, etc), or by having what we’ve coined a “co-career,” meaning a job that is not exactly your art, but feeds your artistic practice (i.e. teaching artist, arts management, graphic design, etc.). When assessing how you are going to earn your living, here are a few key points to think about:

• Weigh your values with your needs. How much will you need to earn to not only meet your basic living expenses (rent, food, transportation, etc.), but to also address expenses linked to your values (eating out with friends, taking classes, seeing shows, etc).
• Earning money from your art is possible. Samples of this income might include: artist stipends, rehearsal pay and/or performer stipends. In addition, you may want to find a fiscal sponsor (like The Field) so that you can apply for grants, create crowdfunding campaigns, and write appeal letters asking others to help fund your creative work.

The flipside of earning is spending. Spending is easy for many people, but managing the spending is harder. Here are a some helpful tips:

• Create a spending diary to help manage your spending. Over the course of the month write down every item you spend money on. Label expenses “personal” or “professional.”  
• Use your spending diary to assess your spending habits so that you can adjust accordingly to meet your goals.
• Continue tracking your spending with a budgeting app like Mint or Budgt.
• If you have expenses that are falling in the “professional” column and you are producing your own work, open a new account to keep your art and personal expenses separate. Budgeting for your projects is similar to budgeting for your life.
• Click here for tips on project budgeting and a sample budget form.

FEATHER 2: RELATIONSHIPS

Building solid relationships is crucial for artists. Not only do relationships help you create balance and personal fulfillment, but your friends, family, and colleagues often become your first audience members and donors. Here are some tips on how to cultivate relationships:

• Make a list of who you want to work with/what organizations you want to work for or get involved with (i.e. volunteering at a benefit, ushering for a show, or doing workstudy in exchange for classes, etc.)

• If there is a person you want to get to know, or a position you want to know more about, we recommend asking that person for either an informational interview or just for cup of coffee. Be attentive, ready to listen, and able to about talk yourself in a clear succinct way (click here for more resources on how to talk about your work).
• Thank yous, updates,and reminders can also be a great way to stay on peoples’ radar. Sending a reminder the day before your meeting tells the person you are on top of your game and sending a simple thank you note or email after a meeting keeps you in that person's thoughts longer. And be sure to add personal notes to your follow-up correspondence (a handwritten note can go a long way these days).
• It is also really great to able to talk about something other than your field. It could be that you and the person you are having coffee with have more in common than just your art, and those connections go a long way both professionally and personally.
• Click here for some more tips on networking.

FEATHER 3: MARKETING

Being an artist means putting yourself in the public sphere and marketing yourself as well as the work you create. Creating a brand this way can be tricky. In the age of social media, we recommend being careful with what you broadcast on Facebook and other media. Here are some key ways to make your marketing materials work for you:

• Start by creating a website. A few very easy to use website builders are Wix, Wordpress, and Squarespace. Be sure to buy your domain name. We also recommend buying your own name as a domain name as well, even if you are not going to use it.
• Create a strong social media presence. If you don’t want your personal facebook and professional facebook getting mixed up, you can create a page for your art, or even create a whole separate account. If you start Twitter and Instagram accounts, be sure to stay active. Using a platform like Hootsuite can help you schedule all of your social media posts.
• Thinking of starting a blog? The key to keeping a blog is keeping it up. Create a schedule and stick to it (i.e. post once a month, once a week, etc.)
• Use a cost effective service like Vistaprint or find a local printer for business cards and postcards.
• Work samples are also incredibly important for grant or showcase applications and your web presence. Photo and video work can quickly and succinctly tell your viewer what your work is about. We recognize that producing this type of media can get expensive so we recommend using skill trading sites to help produce high quality work samples while keeping costs down (try Our Goods or The Artsy Yenta).
• Click here for even more marketing guidance.

FEATHER 4: ENRICHMENT and TRAINING

Building a balanced life between your artist self and personal self is what enrichment and training is about. What it really comes down to is an assessment of your values, and how these play out in each aspect of your personal and professional life. Some ways that you work towards balance may include:

• Continuing to take classes attend festivals, and workshops for your field. See shows, performances, and visit museums and galleries. Consider seeing work that is outside your field for inspiration.
• Take care of your body. It is your instrument. This care could include cross training, cycling, running, yoga, pilates or massage. And don’t forget about health insurance. We suggest looking at Healthcare.gov, Oscar insurance, and The Freelancers Union to get a plan or shop for a better one.
• If community engagement or spirituality is important to you, allow for time in your schedule to participate.

GOAL SETTING

Once our turkey feathers were filled in, we asked these brave artists to set a three-year goal and a one-to-three month goal for the feather they felt was most challenging. The participants collaborated in pairs to come up with 3 realistic action steps for each one of their goals. You can do this for each of the 4 points we have covered in this blog. If keeping your turkey with your action steps on your fridge is a good reminder for you, then do it! If you’re more technically minded, make a spreadsheet that you can look at and update to check in on your goals and action steps. Ask a friend or collaborator to help you create action steps for your goals. They may have ideas you never would have thought of and bringing them into your goal-setting process will keep you on task. And finally, remember to make this kind of dreaming and planning fun!

Thanks to all of the artists who participated in the workshop. And best of luck with those action steps.